PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological*
Though I aspire to review everything that fits into the metaphenomenal/combative idiom, DC SUPER HERO GIRLS is one franchise I'm tempted to ignore. I watched random episodes of the show's two seasons from time to time, and found GIRLS to be okay light entertainment for its target audience, girls aged from 6 to 12. But the program's so undemanding that it makes SCOOBY DOO look like advanced cinema.
The core idea is a high school for superheroes, where various DC characters are leveled to high-schoolers, with a heavy concentration on females, though various junior-ized versions of males like The Flash and Green Lantern appear as a sop to inclusivity. The overall design for all of them follows a sort of fluffy-bunny look in line with the marketing, and the sheer quantity of characters looks suspiciously like an attempt to sell as many plushie toys as possible. That might make sense to toymakers but in HERO there are roughly thirteen characters who play pivotal roles, and another ten or twelve who are background characters. In essence, the students are practically tripping over one another, which doesn't make for a sound ensemble.
The title emphasizes an annual contest in which one of the students gets elected to "hero of the year," but this has only minor consequences for the plot, mostly revolving around parental figures hovering around the heroines. The actual plot deals with two villains, Dark Opal and Eclipso, who steal various item from the girl heroes for some mystical power-plot I've already forgotten.
As a feminist message HERO is nugatory, and the oversaturation of DC heroes and villains has the opposite effect of a smart show like BATMAN: THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD. Either the viewer doesn't know enough about the various icons trundled out to make them interesting, or the writers whip out oddball takes on established continuity-- like associating Eclipso (a female this time out) with the dimension of Gemworld for some random reason. I'll be surprised if the other three telefilms are any better than this one but hope springs eternal.
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